Day 19 can be seen here:
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Showing posts with label Alfred Delp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfred Delp. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Saturday, December 24, 2011
THE END OF ADVENT 2011
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I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
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When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.
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If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, 'cause he was the King
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I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
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John Jacob Niles
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I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
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When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.
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If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, 'cause he was the King
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I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
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John Jacob Niles
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The One Who Cries in the Wilderness
This is another passage from a piece we used
earlier in the series, written by a Father Alfred Delp S.J.,
who was condemned as a traitor in Nazi Germany.
He wrote this shortly before he was hanged in 1945.
Woe to an age when the voices of those who cry
in the wilderness have fallen silent, outshouted
by the noise of the day or outlawed or swallowed up
in the intoxication of progress,
or growing smothered and fainter
for fear and cowardice. The devastation will soon
be so terrifying and universal that the word
"wilderness" will again strike our hearts and minds.
I think we know that.
But still there are no crying voices to raise
their plaint and accusation. Not for an hour
can life dispense with these John-the-Baptist
characters, these original individuals, struck by
the lightning of mission and vocation.
Their heart goes before them,
and that is why their eye is so clear-sighted,
their judgment so incorruptible.
They do not cry for the sake of crying
or for the sake of the voice.
Or because they begrudge earth's pleasant hours,
exiled as they themselves are from the
small warm companionships of the foreground.
Theirs is the great comfort known only to those
who have paced out the inmost and furthermost
boundaries of existence.
They cry for blessing and salvation.
They summon us to our last chance,
while already they feel the ground quaking
and the rafters creaking and see the firmest of
mountains tottering inwardly and see the very stars
in heaven hanging in peril.
They summon us to the opportunity of warding off,
by the greater power of a converted heart,
the shifting desert that will
pounce upon us and bury us.
Let us ask for clear eyes that are able to see
God's messengers of annunciation;
for awakened hearts with the wisdom to hear
the words of promise. Let us ask for faith
in the motherly consecration of life as shown
in the figure of the blessed woman of Nazareth.
Let us be patient and wait,
wait with Advent readiness for the moment
when it pleases God to appear in our night too,
as the fruit and mystery of this time.
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And let us ask for the openness and willingness
to hear God's warning messengers and to
conquer life's wilderness through repentant hearts.
We must not shrink from or suppress
the earnest words of these crying voices,
so that those who today are our executioners
will not tomorrow become accusers because
we have remained silent.
Let us then live in today's Advent,
for it is the time of promise.
To eyes that do not see, it still seems
that the final dice are being cast
down in these valleys, on these battlefields,
in those camps and prisons and bomb shelters.
Those who are awake sense the workings
of the other powers and can await
the coming of their hour.
Space is still filled with the noise of
destruction and annihilation, the shouts
of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping
of despair and helplessness.
But just beyond the horizon the eternal realities
stand silent in their age-old longing.
There shines on us the first mild light of
the radiant fulfillment to come.
From afar sound the first notes as of
pipes and singing boys, not yet discernible
as a song or melody. It is all far off still,
and only just announced and foretold.
But it is happening. This is today.
And tomorrow the angels will tell
what has happend with loud rejoicing voices,
and we shall know it and be glad,
if we have believed and
trusted in Advent.
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Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
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John Updike
American Author
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“You must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say ‘Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation’ … But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
2 PETER 3: 3-4, 8-9
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We live in astounding times. The combination of momentous political change and unusual natural phenomena in recent years has many folks wondering just what the heck is going on. The evangelist Billy Graham recently wrote that he has never in 50 years of ministry had so many people ask him if the end of the world is at hand. The timing of the Second Coming has always titillated Christians, perhaps because it is concealed. For as Jesus said, “No one knows that day or hour, not even the angels in Heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
That instruction often gets forgotten when believers see events that correspond with the signs Christ said would foreshadow His return. There is growing speculation that the Second Coming is imminent, a trend that will only intensify as the turn of the millenium approaches. Christians must take care to not be deceived – either by those who insist He’s coming tomorrow, or those who claim He won’t return in our lifetime. For the “scoffers” are also many, and are on thin ice as well. For decades, progressive thinkers ridiculed “Bible believing” scholars who insisted that Christ’s return would be immediately preceded by such unlikely events as European political union and a cashless society. No one’s laughing today.
But as Peter understood, a comma on a page in the Bible could be 50 or 100 years for us. God defines “soon” much differently than we do. God’s desire is for “everyone to come to repentance” – for us to invite Christ into our hearts and our lives. On a Bethlehem night 2,000 years ago, He came as a babe. One day, He will come in glory.
In our world, He comes to us through the love and caring of forgiven people living changed lives. Christ means for us to join him in eternal life. For now, His will is for us to be here, loving our neighbor until they ask us why, and then pointing them toward the Cross.
These meditations were prepared by Rich Miller of Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Rich is a lay speaker who attends the The Hopewell United Methodist Church in Hopewell Borough, N.J.
From the Christmas in Cyberspace website
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Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
.
John Updike
American Author
.
.
“You must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say ‘Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation’ … But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
2 PETER 3: 3-4, 8-9
.
We live in astounding times. The combination of momentous political change and unusual natural phenomena in recent years has many folks wondering just what the heck is going on. The evangelist Billy Graham recently wrote that he has never in 50 years of ministry had so many people ask him if the end of the world is at hand. The timing of the Second Coming has always titillated Christians, perhaps because it is concealed. For as Jesus said, “No one knows that day or hour, not even the angels in Heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
That instruction often gets forgotten when believers see events that correspond with the signs Christ said would foreshadow His return. There is growing speculation that the Second Coming is imminent, a trend that will only intensify as the turn of the millenium approaches. Christians must take care to not be deceived – either by those who insist He’s coming tomorrow, or those who claim He won’t return in our lifetime. For the “scoffers” are also many, and are on thin ice as well. For decades, progressive thinkers ridiculed “Bible believing” scholars who insisted that Christ’s return would be immediately preceded by such unlikely events as European political union and a cashless society. No one’s laughing today.
But as Peter understood, a comma on a page in the Bible could be 50 or 100 years for us. God defines “soon” much differently than we do. God’s desire is for “everyone to come to repentance” – for us to invite Christ into our hearts and our lives. On a Bethlehem night 2,000 years ago, He came as a babe. One day, He will come in glory.
In our world, He comes to us through the love and caring of forgiven people living changed lives. Christ means for us to join him in eternal life. For now, His will is for us to be here, loving our neighbor until they ask us why, and then pointing them toward the Cross.
These meditations were prepared by Rich Miller of Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Rich is a lay speaker who attends the The Hopewell United Methodist Church in Hopewell Borough, N.J.
From the Christmas in Cyberspace website
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Monday, December 19, 2011
ANGELS FROM ON HIGH
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From an essay by Father Alfred Delp, S.J.,
who was imprisoned and later executed because of
his resistance to the Nazis during World War II.
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From an essay by Father Alfred Delp, S.J.,
who was imprisoned and later executed because of
his resistance to the Nazis during World War II.
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I see Advent this year with greater intensity and anticipation than ever before. Walking up and down in my cell, three paces this way and three paces that way, with my hands in irons and ahead of me an uncertain fate, I have a new and different understanding of God’s promise of redemption and release.
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This reminds me of the angel that was given to me two years ago for Advent by a kind person. The angel bore the inscription, “Rejoice, for the Lord is near.” The angel was destroyed by a bomb. A bomb killed the man who gave it to me, and I often feel he is doing me the service of an angel.
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The horror of these times would be unendurable unless we kept being cheered and set upright again by the promises that are spoken. The angels of annunciation, speaking their message of blessing into the midst of anguish, scattering their seed of blessing that will one day spring up amid the night, call us to hope. These are not yet the loud angels of rejoicing and fulfillment that come out into the open, the angels of Advent. Quiet, inconspicuous, they come into rooms and before hearts as they did then. Quietly the bring God’s questions and proclaim to us the wonders of God,
for whom nothing is impossible.
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For all its earnestness, Advent is a time of inner security, because we have received a message. Oh, if it ever happens that we forget the message and the promises; if all we know is the four walls and the prison windows of our gray days; if we can no longer hear the gentle step of the announcing angels; if our soul no longer is at once shaken and exalted by their whispered word--then it will be all over with us.
We are living wasted time and are dead
before they do us any harm.
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The article below is interesting for a number of reasons, .
not the least of which is that this comes from a website for pastors - reformedworship.org sponsored by the Christian Reformed Church. Here's resources for planning and leading worship. It's ideas about how to get your message across. In this case it's how to get mileage out of angels.
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Have You Seen the Angels?
by Kenneth D Coeman
Pastor, Sonlight Community Christian Reformed Church
Lynden, Washington
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It's fall. You are already noticing the Christmas catalogues showing up in your mailbox.
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This reminds me of the angel that was given to me two years ago for Advent by a kind person. The angel bore the inscription, “Rejoice, for the Lord is near.” The angel was destroyed by a bomb. A bomb killed the man who gave it to me, and I often feel he is doing me the service of an angel.
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The horror of these times would be unendurable unless we kept being cheered and set upright again by the promises that are spoken. The angels of annunciation, speaking their message of blessing into the midst of anguish, scattering their seed of blessing that will one day spring up amid the night, call us to hope. These are not yet the loud angels of rejoicing and fulfillment that come out into the open, the angels of Advent. Quiet, inconspicuous, they come into rooms and before hearts as they did then. Quietly the bring God’s questions and proclaim to us the wonders of God,
for whom nothing is impossible.
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For all its earnestness, Advent is a time of inner security, because we have received a message. Oh, if it ever happens that we forget the message and the promises; if all we know is the four walls and the prison windows of our gray days; if we can no longer hear the gentle step of the announcing angels; if our soul no longer is at once shaken and exalted by their whispered word--then it will be all over with us.
We are living wasted time and are dead
before they do us any harm.
.
.
The article below is interesting for a number of reasons, .
not the least of which is that this comes from a website for pastors - reformedworship.org sponsored by the Christian Reformed Church. Here's resources for planning and leading worship. It's ideas about how to get your message across. In this case it's how to get mileage out of angels.
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Have You Seen the Angels?
by Kenneth D Coeman
Pastor, Sonlight Community Christian Reformed Church
Lynden, Washington
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It's fall. You are already noticing the Christmas catalogues showing up in your mailbox.
Though school has barely begun, your calendar tells you it is time to plan for Advent and Christmas.
And the very thought of it makes you tremble just a little.
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You are a conscientious pastor or worship leader involved in planning worship in your church.
You know how easily the meaning and magnificence of the incarnation of our Lord can be trivialized.
You know how slowly your own heart warms up to its radiance, how dull your own mindcan be to its meaning. But still, each year that holy jealousy for the glory of Christmas is stirred within you.
The hope begins to build again within your heart that once more this year no one in your congregation will leave the manger unclear about what happened, unmoved by its magnitude, or unchanged by its message. You want so much more for them than mere amazement or a touch of "the Christmas spirit," meaningful as such emotions may be. You want them to experience what people under Nazi occupation and oppression during World War II felt when they heard the news that D-Day had come: a sudden and solid hope that liberation is imminent, hope that quickly crescen-doed into inextinguishable joy.
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One doorway into such a vision of Christmas is opened for us by, of all creatures, the angels.
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Angels are everywhere during the advent of Christ. The largest concentration of angels anywhere in the Bible occurs right here—rebuking, informing,encouraging, guiding, protecting, advising, and most of all, worshiping. Moreover, their presence and message did precisely then what we desire now for ourselves and our people: they transformed the vision of ordinary folks going about their ordinary routines by revealing to them that the living God was in fact entering their world—that he was, as in the case of the shepherds, right in the neighborhood. A rigid priest, a baffled young virgin, a strict fiance, common shepherds—all were met with messages by angels.
The impact on each of them was profoundly life-changing.
If our people can be led to see the incarnation through angels' eyes, should we expect anything less?
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Moreover, if ever people were open to messages from angels, they are open now. Angels have been making quite a stir in the popular imagination. In fact, in the last two years there has been a tidal wave of fascination with angels.
Harvard Divinity School now offers a course on angels. Boston College offers two.
The most celebrated play on Broadway recently was Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, the story of a divine messenger who ministers to a man with AIDS. There are angels-only boutiques, angel newsletters, angel seminars, angels on Sonja Live.
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Especially at Christmas there are angels everywhere. We make them in snowdrifts, hang them on trees, bake them in cookies, play them in pageants.
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• Billy Graham's book on angels has been republished. The first edition sold over 3 million copies.
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• Hillary Clinton wears a gold pin on days she needs special help. "Angel's wings," she explains.
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Angels are in the media and cultural air. You can even buy books on angels at the local warehouse supermarket outlet!
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Given these realities, we are presenting the themes and formats of the following five services [not included here] in the hope that the angelic light once shed upon the birth of Christ will illuminate minds and brighten hearts still today.
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From THE URANTIA BOOK
Part IV, 122, 8
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At the noontide birth of Jesus the seraphim of Urantia, assembled under their directors, did sing anthems of glory over the Bethlehem manger, but these utterances of praise were not heard by human ears. No shepherds nor any other mortal creatures came to pay homage to the babe of Bethlehem until the day of the arrival of certain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Jerusalem by Zacharias.
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Friday, December 2, 2011
THE SHAKING REALITY OF ADVENT
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The answer to this question
is that perhaps we were living on earth
in an utterly false and counterfeit security.
And now God strikes the earth till it resounds,
now he shakes and shatters; not to pound
us with fear, but to teach us one thing -
the spirit's innermost moving
and being moved.
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Here is the message of Advent:
faced with him who is the Last,
the world will begin to shake.
Only when we do not cling to false
securities will our eyes be able to see
this Last One and get to the bottom of things.
Only then will we be able to guard our life
from the frights and terrors into which
God the Lord has let the world sink
to teach us, so that we may awaken from sleep,
as Paul says, and see that it is time to repent,
time to change things.
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It is time to say, "All right, it was night;
but let that be over now and let us
be ready for the day."
We must do this with a decision
that comes out of these very horrors
we have experienced and all that is
connected with them; and because of this
our decision will be unshakable
even in uncertainty.
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If we want to transform life again,
if Advent is truly to come again - the Advent
of the people and the nations,
a coming of the Lord in all this -
then the great Advent question for us
is whether we come out of these
convulsions with this determination:
yes, arise! It is time to waken from sleep.
It is time for a waking up to begin somewhere.
It is time to put things back where
God the Lord put them.
It is time for each of us to go to work,
with the same unshakable sureness
that the Lord will come, to set
our life in God's order
wherever we can.
Advent is a time when we ought
to be shaken and brought to a realization
of ourselves.
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alluring dreams in which and by means
of which we always build ourselves
imaginary worlds.
In this way we force reality to take us
to itself by force - by force, in much
pain and suffering.
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Alfred Delp, S.J.
Written in a Nazi prison shortly before
he was hanged, in 1945, for his
opposition to Hitler.
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You can't do the end of the world in
a conventionally dramatic way
or Boy Meets Girl way.
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Terry Southern (1924-1995)
Screenwriter & UniversityLecturer
Wrote dialogue for Doctor Strangelove, The Cincinatti Kid,
Easy Rider, The Magic Christian, and The Loved One.
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The necessary condition for the
fulfillment of Advent is the renunciation
of the presumptuous attitudes andalluring dreams in which and by means
of which we always build ourselves
imaginary worlds.
In this way we force reality to take us
to itself by force - by force, in much
pain and suffering.
.
Alfred Delp, S.J.
Written in a Nazi prison shortly before
he was hanged, in 1945, for his
opposition to Hitler.
.
You can't do the end of the world in
a conventionally dramatic way
or Boy Meets Girl way.
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Terry Southern (1924-1995)
Screenwriter & UniversityLecturer
Wrote dialogue for Doctor Strangelove, The Cincinatti Kid,
Easy Rider, The Magic Christian, and The Loved One.
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